‘Talk about asylum for Al Assad premature’

Putin says it would not be difficult to shelter Syrian president if the situation demanded it

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that it would be too early to speak about granting political asylum to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, a Putin ally and arguably the main obstacle in the Syrian peace process.

Russia has been carrying out air strikes on rebel positions since September in support of Al Assad’s army.

Russia, the United States, Middle East nations are promoting talks between the Syrian government and opposition, and Al Assad has been seen as a highly divisive figure. Putin said in an interview with the German daily Bild published yesterday that Moscow is advocating constitutional reform in Syria and if the next election is democratic, “Al Assad won’t have to go anywhere, no matter if he is elected president or not.”

While Putin refused to speculate on a possible Moscow’s role in helping to remove Al Assad, he indicated that it would not be too difficult for Moscow to do.

“We granted asylum to Snowden,” he said, referring to the American whistle-blower Edward Snowden. “That was more difficult than [it would be] to shelter Al Assad.”

Putin also said Syria needs to start working on a new constitution as a first step to finding a political solution to its civil war, though he acknowledged the process was likely to be difficult.

“I believe it’s necessary to move towards constitutional reform [in Syria]. It’s a complicated process, of course. And after that, on the basis of the new constitution, [Syria should] hold early presidential and parliamentary elections”, Putin said in the interview conducted on January 5.

Putin, obliquely referring to diplomatic pressure from the United States and France to concentrate Moscow’s firepower on Daesh terrorists, said Russian military aid was going to help parts of the Syrian opposition in the fight against Daesh as well as to help Al Assad.

“Do you know that we are backing the actions of the armed opposition combating Daesh? ... We are coordinating our joint actions with them and support their offensive operations on different parts of the front with strikes by our air force.” “I am talking about hundreds, thousands of armed people, who combat Daesh ... Some of them have already spoken about it in public, others prefer keeping silent, but the work is going on.”

Putin made similar comments last year, but Russian officials subsequently denied that Moscow provided military aid to the Syrian opposition groups.

In the interview with Bild, Putin said the row between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Riyadh’s execution of an antigovernment Shiite cleric on January 2 would complicate attempts to reach a solution to the Syrian conflict.